THE LAST RELIEF 
shore operations that might be necessary. I " signed on " at 
a salary of Is. a month, and we sailed from Port Chalmers on 
December 20, 1916. A week later we sighted ice again. The 
Aurora made a fairly quick passage through the pack and 
entered the open water of the Eoss Sea on January 7, 1917. 
Captain Davis brought the Aurora alongside the ice edge 
off Cape Royds on the morning of Jaimary 10, and I went 
ashore with a party to look for some record in the hut erected 
thereby my Expedition in 1907. I found a letter stating that 
the Ross Sea party was housed at Cape Evans, and was on my 
way back to the ship when six men, with dogs and sledge, were 
sighted coming from the direction of Cape Evans. At 1 p.m. 
this party arrived on board, and we learned that of the ten 
members of the Expedition left behind when the Aurora broke 
away on May 6, 1915, seven had survived, namely, A. Stevens, 
E. Joyce, H. E. AVild, J. L. Cope, R. W. Richards, A. K. Jack, 
L 0, Gaze. These seven men were all well, though they showed 
traces of the ordeal through wliich they had passed. They told 
us of the deaths of Mackintosh, Spencer-Smith, and Hayward, 
and of their own anxious wait for relief. 
All that remained to be done was to make a final search for 
the bodies of Mackintosh and Hayward. There was no possi- 
bility of either man being alive. They had been without equip- 
ment when the blizzard broke the ice they were crossing. It 
would have been impossible for them to have survived more than 
a few days, and eight months had now elapsed without news of 
them. Joyce had already searched south of Glacier Tongue. I 
considered that further search should be made in two directions, 
the area north of Glacier Tongue, and the old depot off Butler 
Point, and I made a report to Captain Davis to this effect. 
On January 12 the ship reached a point five and a half miles 
east of Butler Poinfc. I took a party across rubbly and water- 
logged ice to within thirty yards of the piedmont ice, but owing 
to high cliffs and loose slushy ice could not make a landing. The 
land-ice had broken away at the point cut by the cross-beaiings 
of the depot, but was visible in the form of two large bergs 
grounded to the north of Cape Bernacchi. There was no sign 
of the depot or of any person having visited the vicinity. "We 
335 
